Trump on Monday: 'We Will Close the Border Permanently If Need Be'

President Donald Trump began his work-week very early Monday morning, tweeting before 6:30 a.m.:

"Mexico should move the flag waving Migrants, many of whom are stone cold criminals, back to their countries. Do it by plane, do it by bus, do it anyway you want, but they are NOT coming into the U.S.A. We will close the Border permanently if need be. Congress, fund the WALL!"

Television footage on Sunday showed a crowd of illegal immigrants trying to storm the U.S. border in Tijuana, near San Diego. The rushing of the border prompted U.S. Border Patrol agents to close the San Ysidro port of entry to both foot and vehicular traffic on Sunday morning through late Sunday afternoon.

When some of the caravan members tried to rush into the U.S. outside the port of entry, federal agents fired tear gas to turn them back, press reports said.

On Sunday, Trump tweeted, "Would be very SMART if Mexico would stop the Caravans long before they get to our Southern Border, or if originating countries would not let them form (it is a way they get certain people out of their country and dump in U.S. No longer). Dems created this problem. No crossings!"

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), asked for her response to that tweet on ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos, blamed Trump for the crisis at the border about which he complains so frequently:

My mom taught second grade until she was 70 years old, and she
always told me if you do something wrong, you don't tell the truth, you
take responsibility for it. You don't blame it on the other kid.
That's exactly what he's doing here. He controls the White House,
his party controls the House and the Senate and it is on them. What I
think that they should do, George, is first of all he should have been
working with these Central American countries a long time ago to try to -
to try to get to a point where we didn't see this extraordinary amount
of people coming through.
Secondly, comprehensive immigration reform, he has gut punched us on
that a number of times. We have the will to put the money at the border
for better security and combine it with some sensible reforms,
including things like a path to citizenship, things like making sure
that we have workers on our fields and in our factories that we need.
But he has chosen instead to weaponize this, to politicize it and it
is also wrong for our work with the rest of the world. So he has an
opportunity here, especially with a new Congress coming in, to get this
done. So it is all -- rests in that office on him and he needs to get
this done.

Trump last week said a government shutdown is possible if he doesn't get funding for a border wall, something Democrats oppose.

"Are you open to any negotiation on this border wall funding?" Stephanopoulos asked Klobuchar:

"We have tried to negotiate with him but he won't take yes for an answer," the senator responded. "You look at this, we tried to negotiate on the Dreamers, and that was led by reasonable Republicans Mike Rounds, a senator from South Dakota, and Johnny Isakson, the senator from Georgia. I was in that group, a small group of us that were working to find a way out with border money as well as making sure that we protected the Dreamers, something a vast majority of Americans supported," Klobuchar said.

"So of course, we're willing to talk about this. But if he wants to just keep playing politics with it, instead of getting it done, we aren't going to be able to get it done."

Klobuchar said her priorities for the current lame-duck sessions are the farm bill and criminal justice reform.

Would she be willing to go along with some wall funding in exchange for getting those things done?

"We're talking about personnel. We're talking about a whole grouping of things that protect security. But what I don't think we should do is shut down the government and that, again, is in his hands and his party's hands."

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